This Wretched Hive Of Scum And Villainy

[Lord Halifax]

d Andrea Jenkyns (who opened the conference by operatically singing the national anthem - including the more... aggressive verses).

the one with "Rebellious Scots to crush!" or something else?

Thankfully she stopped before she got that far!

But she did include all the ones asking God to crush your enemies, before the conference became 48 hours attacking their own party, which had some… interesting implications.

"Scatter our enemies,
And make them fall!
Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks"

seems fitting

[CumbrianLefty]

Damian Green's remarks about sewage* aren't terribly helpful all told.

(*and no, in this case that wasn't a reference to his online history)

[Torrain]

Damian Green's remarks about sewage* aren't terribly helpful all told.

Jonathan Ashworth's live reaction pretty much sums it up:

[Blair]

Damian Green's remarks about sewage* aren't terribly helpful all told.

(*and no, in this case that wasn't a reference to his online history)

I very much do not understand why at the age of 67, as a backbencher, and after a long career which ended relatively badly you would chose to spend your time and energy to go on TV to defend this Government.

It really really baffles me about politics.

[Torrain]

Richard Bacon is standing down as MP for South Norfolk (majority of 21k) at the next election.

Skeptical of climate change, anti-terror laws, aiding any combat in the Middle East, and public scrutiny of his use of taxis, Bacon was an odd duck as a Tory MP. His most prominent moment seems to be his accidental role in the downfall of Charles Clarke as Home Secretary. His questions about the release of prisoners helped open the scandal that downed Clarke, who Bacon apparently liked and didn't want fired.

Earlier in the year, he was criticised for being "practically anonymous" locally, and recently lost a vote held by his local association, who seem to have threatened to open selections up if he stood again.

The last time anyone other than the Tories won South Norfolk was the 1945 election, so I guess we should get used to whichever Tory candidate replaces Bacon.

[CumbrianLefty]

Average age of retiring Labour MPs is around 70. With Tory MPs, its in the 50s.

[Blair]

The one trend is that while the new Conservative MPs are a bit weird and obsessed with niche issues they do at least make an effort locally- it was broadly the same with Labour 97 intake.

The days of MPs who only go to their seat once a month and attend the summer fair are relatively over

[Blair]

Tory selection for mayor has been happening. I’m too lazy to list the candidates when it’s obvious who they want it to be- Paul Scully.

A  harmless outer London MP who has been London minister and various other junior roles- impressively for someone who served under Blobby and Truss he didn’t embarrass himself.

But it’s very much the equivalent of labour running one of their junior MPs or backbenches- he will get the Conservative vote and I guess the anti-Sadiq vote now it’s FPTP.

[Wiswylfen]

An MS—yes, from Wales—is among the candidates for the Tory selection.

[Torrain]

Dominic Raab is retiring at the next election - leaving Esher and Walton open. Slim 2.7k Tory majority over the Lib Dems in 2019, after a concerted tactical vote campaign in 2019.

I’d be curious to see whether the tactical vote was anti-Tory, or anti-Raab. Local elections results this year put Lib Dems marginally ahead of the Tories, but behind the collective of Residents Associations that seem to dominate locally.

[JimJamUK]

Dominic Raab is retiring at the next election - leaving Esher and Walton open. Slim 2.7k Tory majority over the Lib Dems in 2019, after a concerted tactical vote campaign in 2019.

I’d be curious to see whether the tactical vote was anti-Tory, or anti-Raab.

It’s clearly the sort of area that would have significantly swung Lib Dem in 2019, but given how massive the swing was, the latter looks to have been very influential as well. Raab’s on the right wing of the Conservative Party, resigned as Brexit secretary because May’s deal was insufficiently hard Brexit, and appeared to have such poor personal skills that Harry Dunn’s parents (child killed by an American with ‘diplomatic immunity’) decided to actively endorse his Lib Dem opponent. Raab’s retirement should help the Conservatives hold on, though IIRC boundary changes are not good for them.

[Alcibiades]

Dominic Raab is retiring at the next election - leaving Esher and Walton open. Slim 2.7k Tory majority over the Lib Dems in 2019, after a concerted tactical vote campaign in 2019.

I’d be curious to see whether the tactical vote was anti-Tory, or anti-Raab.

It’s clearly the sort of area that would have significantly swung Lib Dem in 2019, but given how massive the swing was, the latter looks to have been very influential as well. Raab’s on the right wing of the Conservative Party, resigned as Brexit secretary because May’s deal was insufficiently hard Brexit, and appeared to have such poor personal skills that Harry Dunn’s parents (child killed by an American with ‘diplomatic immunity’) decided to actively endorse his Lib Dem opponent. Raab’s retirement should help the Conservatives hold on, though IIRC boundary changes are not good for them.

It voted almost 60% Remain, so it was always going to structurally give the Lib Dems a good result in 2019, though, yes, Raab’s odiousness made it even closer. That said, if anything close to the current polling holds, I very much struggle to see the Tories even keeping it close; it ought to be a pretty comfortable Lib Dem gain. You are right about the boundary changes — the seat is shrinking and losing its most Tory parts, namely Cobham (though this was still a Lib Dem gain at the locals!) and Oxshott, land of Chelsea players’ mansions, while retaining the most Lib Dem-friendly areas, such as Claygate, Molesey and the Dittons, which are pretty similar to neighbouring parts of Kingston and Twickenham.

[Torrain]

Phillip Dunne (Ludlow, majority of 23k) also standing down. Seat was Lib Dem 2001-2005, and has been safely Conservative (with scattered opposition) ever since.

Edit: dates fixed

[YL]

Phillip Dunne (Ludlow, majority of 23k) also standing down. Seat was Lib Dem 1997-2005, and has been safely Conservative (with scattered opposition) ever since.

2001.  Al will be able to say more about how the Tories managed to lose it.

The seat is currently proposed to be renamed South Shropshire in spite of only minor boundary changes.  Those boundary changes, although minor, do add a couple of rural wards from Shrewbury & Atcham, and I've seen a suggestion that that constituency's incumbent might now want to follow those wards.

[CumbrianLefty]

In a competitive national environment Raab's retirement might give the Tories some hope of holding his seat, yes - but that's not really where we are at present.

[Torrain]

Sunak’s Cabinet Office reporting Johnson’s apparent Chequers lawbreaking to the police, rather than covering for him, is producing some wild reaction from the backbenches:
https://twitter.com/CatNeilan/status/1661292796353847298

[Cassius]

I would not be shocked if we see a Braverman leadership bid before the next election.

[YL]

Is this actually a significant group of MPs, or is it a small group of troublemakers who happen to have the ear of some sympathetic journalists?

[Torrain]

Is this actually a significant group of MPs, or is it a small group of troublemakers who happen to have the ear of some sympathetic journalists?

I’d gamble it’s the latter right now. They’re briefing anonymously to keep their numbers obscured, and the tactic seems to be to bombard friendly journalists (see Christopher Hope) with quotes, rather than spread out amongst the different political editors etc.

As ever, the number of Johnson defenders is hard to gauge. Is it the 20-30 votes he got to oppose the Windsor Framework? Or are there the 100 votes Graham Brady says he got in nominations to be leader again last October? Presumably it’s much closer to the first than the second, which is unverified anyway.

[EastAnglianLefty]

It also depends how interchangeable the various anti-Sunak groupings are. Are those who want Johnson back also willing to work in support of Braverman and vice versa? How about the lingering group of Truss ultras?

[CumbrianLefty]

It also depends how interchangeable the various anti-Sunak groupings are. Are those who want Johnson back also willing to work in support of Braverman and vice versa? How about the lingering group of Truss ultras?

All this probably keeps Sunak safe until the GE - even if there *is* a confidence vote late this year it is still very hard to see him not winning it.

Just as well perhaps, as not much else seems to be going for him at the moment.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

2001.  Al will be able to say more about how the Tories managed to lose it.

Ludlow was an open seat in 2001 and the local Conservative Association made the courageous decision to select a candidate, Martin Taylor-Smith, with no ties to Shropshire, the Marches or even the wider West Midlands and who was, in fact, from, and still lived in, Kent, a place so distant that it might as well be in France as far as most people in Shropshire are concerned. Local irritation was amplified by the fact that the constituency had last had an attentive MP back in the 1970s (the retiring incumbent, Christopher Gill, was from Wolverhampton, which is relatively local, but was more interested in pursuing his various hobby-horses than representing the constituency, and his predecessor, previously an MP for a constituency in the Liverpool suburbs, was largely notable for being very fortunate to have avoided arrest as a result of a privatization-related insider trading scandal) and the fact that Taylor-Smith came across as a rather pompous man with a tremendous sense of entitlement. Gill was also to contribute in a small way to the fiasco that unfolded by making crudely racist remarks (to back-up another retiring Conservative MP who had also made crudely racist remarks) from which Taylor-Smith made no attempt to distance himself.

The constituency still had a solid majority in 1997 (12.7%) but this was inflated by local confusion as to which opposition party was the best option to vote for: the LibDems managed 30% and Labour 25%. But Labour now had unexpected gains in the county to defend and so activists were under the usual instruction to visit those places rather than to fight a flag-flying campaign locally. This left the path clear for the LibDems, who had already chosen a very strong candidate: Matthew Green, a big jolly man from a well-known local Tory gentry family and who came across himself as essentially an old-fashioned Tory Wet. As well as the inevitable tactical squeeze message, he ran hard on the obvious contrast between himself and Taylor-Smith - or, as the leaflets always referred to him as, 'The Conservative from Kent' - but avoided getting overly nasty with it, which made it all the more effective. This would still not ordinarily have been quite enough to win, but Taylor-Smith had clearly not expected to actually have to campaign seriously, and reacted badly to this turn of events: there were numerous incidents in which he behaved rudely to wavering Conservative voters on the doorstep, and word got around very quickly, as it always does, and proved to be the final straw.

The strange part is that Taylor-Smith did actually move to the area after his defeat, and spent a number of years as a local government figure in Ludlow. He has since returned to Kent and is a parish councillor near Tunbridge Wells. Green, meanwhile, left politics after his narrow loss in 2005, but was heavily involved in the recent LibDem by-election triumph at North Shropshire.

The seat is currently proposed to be renamed South Shropshire in spite of only minor boundary changes.  Those boundary changes, although minor, do add a couple of rural wards from Shrewbury & Atcham, and I've seen a suggestion that that constituency's incumbent might now want to follow those wards.

We are going to be absolutely deluged with creeps and I hate it.

[CumbrianLefty]

And re my above post, today's PMQs was if anything even more of a blood sport than last week's.

I wonder if the PM leaving the country helped along this recent descent of the Tories into anarchy.

[Torrain]

There's more:
https://twitter.com/benrileysmith/status/1661366579659960324

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

There's more:
https://twitter.com/benrileysmith/status/1661366579659960324

Ah, the Tory party's certainly unified enough to be a marvelous governing party! This is all the proof you need!